1. Field of the Invention
This invention relates to a recording device wherein pattern and character information are printed out at a high speed from electronic computers, etc. More particularly, the present invention is concerned with a device which forms an image information pattern on a photosensitive body by deflecting and modulating a laser beam with pattern and character information emanating from electronic computers, and so forth and then produces a high quality hard copy of such image information at a high speed by use of an image transfer type electrophotographic process.
2. Description of the Prior Art
With recent trends toward high performance electronic computers, it has been desired that a high speed output device for high quality pattern and character information, etc. be developed. For the high speed output device for character information alone, there has heretofore been known a drum-type mechanical impact line printer, a multi-stylus electrostatic printer, a CRT printer which is a combination of CRT (mainly OFT) and the electrophotographic process.
However, the mechanical impact line printer is limited in its print-out speed, and has such disadvantages as tremendous noise from its mechanical parts, poor reliability in operation, and so forth. The multi-stylus electrostatic printer is limited in its resolution, and has such disadvantages that expensive electrostatic recording sheets must be used as the recording material, and others. Further, the CRT printer is disadvantageous in its difficulty in maintaining, over a long period of time, the desired high quality printing state due to a low degree of stability in the CRT driving circuit, and so on.
In view of the foregoing, there have developed various difficulties with character information output devices of various known types when outputting at high speed characters of complicated configurations such as, in particular, Chinese characters.
Further, there have been known heretofore various output devices for pattern informations alone such as a mechanical X-Y plotter, a drafter, a multi-stylus electrostatic plotter, a CRT plotter to optically record an information pattern displayed on the CRT for display purposes, and others. Of these known devices, the mechanical X-Y plotter and the drafter are disadvantageous because of their very low recording speed. The multi-stylus electrostatic plotter, on the other hand, has the disadvantage that the recording paper should be a specially processed paper. Furthermore, the CRT plotter is accompanied by such disadvantages as low resolution in the CRT per se, inferior stability, insufficient light intensity, etc..